Hepcat and I used to go to Phil Niblock's music space/loft, Experimental Intermedia, on Center Street back when we were dating in the 1980's. We heard some great music there and saw his slide shows, cool experimental movies and video.

What a great guy. He and Hepcat used to have really interesting conversations as we walked around the loft and looked at his computers.

I hope we can make it over to see Niblock this week at Issue Project Room located in the American Can Factory on Third Street. The show is on June 19th at 10 p.m. 

Here's the blurbabge: "Phill Niblock is a New York-based minimalist composer and
multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a
foundation born in the flames of 1968’s barricade-hopping. He has been
a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant garde ever since. In
the history books Niblock is the forgotten Minimalist. That’s as maybe:
no one ever said the history books were infallible anyway.

"His influence has had more impact on younger composers such as Susan
Stenger, Lois V Vierk, David First, and Glenn Branca. He’s even worked
with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo on “Guitar two, for
four” which is actually for five guitarists.

"This is Minimalism in the
classic sense of the word, if that makes sense. Niblock constructs big
24-track digitally-processed monolithic microtonal drones. The result
is sound without melody or rhythm. Movement is slow, geologically slow.
Changes are almost imperceptible, and his music has a tendency of
creeping up on you. The vocal pieces are like some of Ligeti’s choral
works, but a little more phased. And this isn’t choral work. “A Y U (as
yet untitled)” is sampled from just one voice, the baritone Thomas
Buckner. The results are pitch shifted and processed intense drones,
one live and one studio edited. Unlike Ligeti, this isn’t just for
voice or hurdy gurdy.

"Like Stockhausen’s electronic pieces, Musique
Concrete, or even Fripp and Eno’s No Pussyfooting, the role of the
producer/composer in “Hurdy Hurry” and “A Y U” is just as important as
the role of the performer. He says: “What I am doing with my music is
to produce something without rhythm or melody, by using many microtones
that cause movements very, very slowly.” The stills in the booklet are
from slides taken in China, while Niblock was making films which are
painstaking studies of manual labour, giving a poetic dignity to sheer
gruelling slog of fishermen at work, rice-planters, log-splitters,
water-hole dredgers and other back-breaking toilers. Since 1968 Phill
has also put on over 1000 concerts in his loft space, including Ryoji Ikeda, Zbigniew Karkowski, Jim O’Rourke."

To repeat: June 19th at 10 p.m. Issue Project Room.